Why am I passionate about this?

Astronomy teaches us that our bodies are quite literally star stuff, chemical elements made inside exploding stars. For much of my life, I studied and researched astronomy in universities, and in observatories on remote and beautiful mountain tops and in space.  I explored the cosmos for its own sake, but I came to realise also that we are literally and metaphorically a part of the Universe, not apart from it. Just as the science of astronomy has done for me, these novels put humanity against the same backdrop: cosmic lives seen through women’s eyes. 


I wrote

The Secret Lives of Planets: Order, Chaos, and Uniqueness in the Solar System

By Paul Murdin,

Book cover of The Secret Lives of Planets: Order, Chaos, and Uniqueness in the Solar System

What is my book about?

The subtitle of my book is Order, Chaos and Uniqueness in the Solar System.  It contrasts the conventional idea that…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Contact

Paul Murdin Why did I love this book?

The novel is about Ellie Arroway, a radio astronomer (played by Jody Foster in the movie of the book), who finds radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. They contain instructions to make a vehicle, by which she travels through wormholes to understand the nature of the Universe. The author, planetologist Carl Sagan, based Arroway on Jill Tarter, director of the real-life institute to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). “Carl Sagan wrote a book about a woman who does what I do, not about me,” explained Tarter. “He did his homework, and thus included many of the ‘character-building’ experiences that are common to women scientists studying and working in a male-dominated profession, so [she] seems very familiar to me.” Sagan links Arroway’s/Tarter’s story with the way that ETs might make themselves known to us, and what we might learn from them. 

By Carl Sagan,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Contact as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In December 1999 a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who - or what - is out there?


Book cover of Variable Stars

Paul Murdin Why did I love this book?

Caroline Herschel was the sister of William Herschel, a church organist and piano tutor, latterly the discoverer of the planet Uranus, a mapper of the skies, and an astronomer at the court of King George III. At first, she devoted herself to her brother, acting as his housekeeper, musical accompanist, and PA in Bath and then as his scientific assistant in Slough, near Windsor Castle. She submerged her own volition to his. But gradually she found her own life in astronomy, and discovered 8 comets, pooh-poohed as small by the King but much appreciated by Queen Charlotte and her ladies. She became known internationally in her own right. She lived to a considerable old age in Hannover, where she was born. The book is a fictionalised but real-life story that echoes between the eighteenth century and our own time.

By Christina Koning,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Variable Stars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is a story of love and astronomy; music and silence; secrets and truth-telling; of world-changing discoveries, and unrequited desire. Moving from York in the 1780s to Regency Bath, and then to Hanover in the 1840s, it concerns the lives of three people-all astronomers. There is Caroline, torn between her passion for music and her passion for the stars; John, deaf from childhood, whose extraordinary mathematical gifts afford him perspectives not available to others; and Edward, friend and mentor to Caroline and to John, who must conceal his innermost feelings from them both. All three find fulfilment in the heavens…


Book cover of The Falling Sky

Paul Murdin Why did I love this book?

Scottish astronomer and novelist Pippa Goldschmidt mixes astronomy and fiction in her novel. The book provides insight into the way that astronomy is carried out now in modern, remote, mountain-top observatories and in space (I can vouch for its verisimilitude). Jeanette is a young, lonely, junior researcher working in a university department dominated by male egos and incompetents. She puts academic politics and unsatisfactory affairs aside and travels to a mountain-top observatory in Chile for her research, making an unexpected discovery that throws her into conflict with her colleagues. Like her love life, her scientific life spirals out of her control: the Universe is ordered by science but her life and the lives of scientists are not.

By Pippa Goldschmidt,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Falling Sky as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A blackly comic campus satire combined with a heart-breaking family mystery, The Falling Sky brilliantly mixes fiction and astronomy into a fascinating, compelling, and moving narrative

Jeanette is a young, solitary post-doctoral researcher who has dedicated her life to studying astronomy. Struggling to compete in a prestigious university department dominated by egos and incompetents, and caught in a cycle of brief and unsatisfying affairs, she travels to a mountaintop observatory in Chile to focus on her research. There Jeanette stumbles upon evidence that will challenge the fundamentals of the universe, drawing her into conflict with her colleagues and the scientific…


Book cover of Two on a Tower

Paul Murdin Why did I love this book?

In this Wessex novel by Thomas Hardy, Lady Constantine’s explorer-husband has been missing for years when she offers patronage to the Byronic astronomer, Swithin St. Cleeve, letting him use a tower on her estate as an observatory. He shows her the stars through his telescope, passionately explaining what lies behind the astronomical images. Presuming her husband dead, she secretly marries St Cleeve, but a complicated legacy intrudes, and it transpires that her husband has been living with an African princess before blowing his head off. Suicide, bigamy, a lost legacy, an illegitimate child, the plot lines (there are many more than I have mentioned!) are resolved by numerous and dramatic deaths.  This scandalous romance is melodramatically plotted, but gains a certain sublime power as an “emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe".

By Thomas Hardy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Two on a Tower as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

TWO ON A TOWER (1882) is a tale of star-crossed love in which Hardy sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is ten years her junior. Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart. This is Hardy's most complete treatment of the theme of love across the class and age divide and the fullest expression of his fascination…


Book cover of Leader of the Band

Paul Murdin Why did I love this book?

Fay Weldon’s novels are plotted like my book Secret Lives of Planets: a sequence of chance and disconnected events which nevertheless form a biography. In this novel, Sandra Harris, known to her TV fans as "Starlady Sandra”, an astronomer (famous for her discovery of the new planet Athena), and a “professional searcher after truth”, leaves her inadequate husband and runs off with her jazz-playing lover to the south of France. She is pursued by her husband, her lover’s wife, and paparazzi. “She’s always seeing things“, her friends say: new planets, her Nazi war-criminal eugenicist father, her insane mother, other people. Human lives are a farce, like the accidental events of cosmology. 

By Fay Weldon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Leader of the Band as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Starlady Sandra is a woman devoted to her own desires. Discoverer of the planet Athena, television astronomer and wife to a humourless barrister she finds Jack, the sax player, irresistable. Sandra gives up everything to follow Jack and his caravan of musicians to France.


Explore my book 😀

The Secret Lives of Planets: Order, Chaos, and Uniqueness in the Solar System

By Paul Murdin,

Book cover of The Secret Lives of Planets: Order, Chaos, and Uniqueness in the Solar System

What is my book about?

The subtitle of my book is Order, Chaos and Uniqueness in the Solar System.  It contrasts the conventional idea that the planets are locked into a perfect, repetitive, interlocking mechanical machine like a watch with the increasing realisation by astronomers of the strong role that chance and chaos have played in the way planets develop.  

I wrote the book with the thought in mind that the evolution of a planet was akin to someone’s life – a sequence of chance events linked by the progression that, in retrospect, makes the arc of an individual’s biography.  In the solar system, the major chance event was an orbital interference of Jupiter and Saturn.  It threw asteroids all around the solar system, smashing into the Earth and creating our satellite, scarring rocky worlds like Mercury and the Moon with craters, and ejecting countless asteroids, even planets, into the cold, dark depths of interstellar space.  That was a fate that our Earth evidently avoided, but only by chance.     

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Falcon's Call

By Mike Waller,

Book cover of Falcon's Call

Mike Waller Author Of Falcon's Call

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, I lived in a small valley sheltered from the night city lights. I could see the stars, and from that time, that is where my imagination dwelled. As a teenager, I read several of the books I have listed here, and from that point, I was inspired to read more and also to write myself. I sincerely believe that despite our current problems, humanity will outlive its troubled childhood and reach for the stars. We are destined for the stars, and only in the works of science fiction writers is that future explored. The books below helped me to become a successful author in my own right.

Mike's book list on scifi humanity’s future in space and time

What is my book about?

An alien starship appears in the Solar System! Humanity faces a glorious future, or total extinction, and only Joe Falcon can make the choice. Never would Joe have imagined it would fall to him to make the decision that would alter the destiny of two worlds, launching humanity towards a glorious future, or to extinction.

Falcon's Call is an action packed dive into the unknown, written in the style of the great, classic, science-fiction stories. If you like surprising plot twists, compelling characters and a hero who actually cares, you must read this new novel by Mike Waller.

Falcon's Call

By Mike Waller,

What is this book about?

Reader's Favorite Gold Medal winner 2019
B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree 2019
Chill With A Book Premier Award 2019

In a heart-pounding battle for humanity's survival, one man holds the key to a glorious future or utter extinction.

In a race against time, Earth and Mars race to claim a derelict alien ship as it enters the Solar System, both aware that whichever planet succeeds might in so doing achieve technological advantage over the other. But who should they send? Joe Falcon, an unlikely candidate, never saw himself as the "right" person. Accompanied by a crew of misfits, each fleeing their own…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in astronomers, jazz musicians, and school?

Astronomers 25 books
Jazz Musicians 37 books
School 276 books